Crawford tires-to-energy plant under construction

Crawford Renewable Energy has begun building a $350 million tires-to-energy plant in Crawford County.

The company broke ground in the Keystone Regional Industrial Park, south of Meadville, this month, although legal action against the plant is pending.

Contractors are excavating and conducting foundation work at the 80-acre site, said Mark Turner, executive director of the Economic Progress Alliance of Crawford County, which owns the industrial park.

CRE will not be able to operate the plant until litigation regarding its air-quality permit is resolved.

"The company can go ahead with construction" because its construction permits were not challenged, Department of Environmental Protection northwest region spokesman Gary Clark said. "The chance that it takes is that if the (air-quality) permit is not upheld, it will lose its investment."

CRE may be risking that investment to avoid the expensive and time-consuming task of applying for a new air-quality permit. If it had not begun construction, its current permit, issued by the DEP in October 2011, would expire this month.

"If it lapsed, CRE would have to do the whole application process all over again," Clark said.

The permit is valid for just 18 months before construction to ensure that emission controls proposed by developers are still the latest and best available and that projected plant emissions still fall within state and federal standards, Clark said. The company could have applied for an extension but would have had to revise and update its air-quality data.

CRE President Gregory J. Rubino on Wednesday declined to discuss the company's decision to build the plant.

Crawford County residents Leah Hume and Robert Concilus appealed the DEP's decision to issue the air-quality permit for the plant in November 2011. The appeal has been before the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board since.

In recent months, CRE, DEP and residents have exchanged a flurry of legal motions in the case. Their fight centers on the plant's projected emissions. Hume and Concilus claim that the plant -- by burning 900 tons of scrap tires daily to generate electricity -- would emit far more dangerous chemicals than CRE projects, including 690 tons of carbon monoxide annually.

Their attorney, Sanford Kelson, of Conneaut Lake, also claims that CRE did not thoroughly investigate other possible sites for the plant, or alternate plant sizes and alternate energy-generating processes.

The "alternatives analysis" is required for an air-quality permit, and DEP improperly approved the plan without it, Kelson said in recent court documents.

CRE's "undocumented, freewheeling" analysis also failed to adequately compare the economic and environmental costs and benefits of the plant, Kelson said. He asked state environmental Judge Thomas Renwand to require a more thorough analysis.

CRE and state environmental attorneys said the company's analysis was thorough. Claims that it was not are "nonsense," "misleading and absurd," CRE attorney Matthew Wolford, of Erie, said in court filings.

Wolford called the challenges a delaying tactic, "with hope that the project developer will become discouraged and give up."

Renwand has not yet ruled on the appeal, and his ruling might not be the end of legal challenges to the power plant. His decision could be appealed to Commonwealth Court.

The proposed plant would burn scrap tires to generate 90 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power about 45,000 homes. It would create 300 direct and spinoff jobs, Rubino said.

VALERIE MYERS can be reached at 878-1913 or by e-mail. Follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/ETNmyers.